A ‘newish’ online world designed for teens called Gaia Online has remained under the radar for a while now, but recently, the San Jose company has been showing some pretty compelling stats – like 2 million unique hits a month! But what’s more interesting than the total number of teens checking out the site is how users are being encouraged to contribute back into the system and the monetary system being used.
In an interview with GigaOM, Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online explains that “the world is just a conduit to the larger activity on Gaia.
In addition, there are website arenas where users can upload
and rate each other’s artwork and other content (7-10% total activity),
or play multiplayer Flash mini-games with group chat (10-15% total
activity.) The largest cohort of activity (wholly 30%) takes place in
the Gaia forums, and here’s where the truly staggering numbers come in:
Averaging a million posts a day and a billion posts so far, Gaia’s
message boards (with topics running the gamut from pop culture to
politics) is second only to Yahoo in popularity.
To get the amount of participation from it’s users that it does, Gaia has introduced an ingenius monetary system.
A unique innovation is the way the company distributes its virtual gold currency: instead of selling it for real money (as with There) or allowing its trade on the open market (as with Second Life), Gaians are automatically given gold for participation: You get gold for posting on the Forums, for riding events, for uploading content, for exploring the world. Subscribers are rewarded for engaging in Gaia, in other words — the reward incents them to engage in Gaia even more.
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The “gold” system sounds a little like how Kaneva was/is doing things. Unfortunately, I’ve not paid much attention to either.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
hey
September 18th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I love the site because it gives everyone a chance to be heard and make new friends with the same interests as you.
Plus it is the only site that i think is interesting because I get to meet new people each day and we all like to hang out with each other.
October 7th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
hey guys if ur on this go on 43things.com
send this gaiaadmn@yahoo.com]
user:
pass:
how much gold u want:
2 gaiaadmn@yahoo.com
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Gaia is a great website when you can talk to people and make your own avi and join clubs
November 12th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
… as for mr gaiaadmin up. dont listen to him. hes not an admin and take a look at there policy, the realy admins NEVER ask for you password. (jerk)
gaias maketplace is almost like the stockmarket. sep you can get stuff you realy want,(in gaia), and sell it when it gets hot,
the monthy collectabls att to the stock, and every 15 day of every month the price of the lastmonts collectable gose up depending on the item, and on the 1st of every month, lastmonths collectable skyrockes. it just awsome.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I’ve been on Gaia since 2003, and I’d have to say that the main thing that deters me from the site is that most people there are gold oriented and make friends based on their wealth in gold (so they can get their expensive items) or popularity.
In addition, I dislike the social elitism associated with being an oldbie, having a lot of gold, or being popular in certain forums or in Gaia Towns.
Right, so you think that an oldbie like me who has expensive stuff should shutup and be grateful to Gaia? Well, I am grateful and glad that Gaia’s grown to be successful. What I don’t like is the community of users- until people there stop being obsessed with gold and “social capital”, I won’t really be involved in the community that much.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:10 am
I like gaia
February 25th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I am a Gaia member, my entire family including nieces and nephews enjoy playing on Gaia. However lately they have resorted to some practices that is disturbing. They have gone on a banning spree. Some of the reasons are not capital offenses. And worst is why are they doing this to members who are paying (as in real money) customers. Aren’t they in the business of making a profit? And when you try to work it out with them, there number one response is “open a new account”. But the worst offense is when they ban account with real money in them and then refuse to give a refund or transfer the money to the new account. I am starting to suspect that the ban spree is to falsely boost up membership. That’s how they got Verizon Wireless to back them up. Or an elaborate scam. Cause if you start all over again, you find the need to invest more money to get to the level you were before the banning. Regardless of their motive it’s bad customer service and something must be done. I can’t imagine how much money they have kept from unsuspecting “13″ year old’s.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:37 pm